Validation of ionospheric specifications during geomagnetic storms: TEC and foF2 during the 2013 March storm event-II

In order to track improvement of the models and investigate impacts of forcing, from the lower atmosphere below and from the magnetosphere above, on the performance of ionosphere-thermosphere models, we expand our previous assessment for 2013 March storm event (Shim et al., 2018, ). In this study, we evaluate new simulations from upgraded models (the Coupled Thermosphere Ionosphere Plasmasphere Electrodynamics (CTIPe) model version 4.1 and the Global Ionosphere Thermosphere Model (GITM) version 21.11) and from the NCAR Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model with thermosphere and ionosphere extension (WACCM-X) version 2.2 including eight simulations in the previous study.

A simulation from the NCAR Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Electrodynamics General Circulation Model version 2 (TIE-GCM 2.0) is also included for comparison with WACCM-X. TEC and foF2 changes from quiet-time background are considered to evaluate the model performance on the storm impacts. For evaluation, we employ four skill scores: Correlation coefficient (CC), root-mean square error (RMSE), ratio of the modeled to observed maximum percentage changes (Yield), and timing error (TE).